Ethics & Public Policy Center

Wilfred M. McClay

Wilfred M. McClay, a Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a widely acclaimed expert on American intellectual and cultural history.

He is the G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History Liberty at University of Oklahoma, where he is also Professor of History. He was appointed in 2002 to the National Council on the Humanities, the advisory board for the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is also a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

Professor McClay has written several books, including The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America (North Carolina, 1994), The Student’s Guide to U.S. History (ISI Books, 2001), and Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America (Woodrow Wilson Center/Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). He is currently at work on a biographical study of the American sociologist David Riesman, and is editing two collections of essays, one called Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past, which features sixteen essays by American historians on changing American understandings of self and person, and a collection of his own essays entitled Pieces of a Dream: Historical and Critical Essays.

Professor McClay is co-editor of Rowman and Littlefield’s book series entitled American Intellectual Culture. He serves on the editorial boards of First Things, The Wilson Quarterly, The Public Interest, Society, Touchstone, Historically Speaking, and University Bookman, and is a member of the Board of Governors of The Historical Society.

He received his B.A. from St. John’s College in Annapolis and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.